


give me purpose, give me strength

by fluffysfics



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Porn with Feelings, Telepathy, more feelings than porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:20:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23018455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffysfics/pseuds/fluffysfics
Summary: The Master is utterly broken. Instead of using the Death Particle, the Doctor takes him into her TARDIS, and all she wants is to find out what’s wrong.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 192





	give me purpose, give me strength

The Doctor is a being so far above him now, the Master thinks. Creator of their species, truly immortal, so many lives burned through before he ever met her. Even if she doesn’t remember them, she lived them, and he could never even begin to imagine what she is. What she has lived. 

And yet, she is insistent on forgiving him. It had started on Gallifrey; she’d heard the pain in his voice as he begged her to end them both, she’d put down the Death Particle, she’d offered him her hand instead. Like the broken, desperate fool he was, he’d taken it. 

Now, he lies in one of the spare bedrooms of her TARDIS. The door is locked; she doesn’t quite trust him yet. The Master doesn’t blame her. She told him to rest, said she would come to check on him later. 

Resting is hard when your body is burning, both physically and psychologically. Physically, because the Doctor’s first order of business once on board her TARDIS had been to extract the Cyberium from him using a _very_ painful machine. Psychologically, because once again he was proving how much _lesser_ than her he was. Needing her help, being so completely broken that he’s not even trying to escape this room. Pathetic. How could she ever consider him an equal?

He’s still drowning in his thoughts when the Doctor knocks at the door. He hums a vague ‘come in’, and she does. She looks tired, world-weary, and yet...something in her eyes seems more at peace with herself than he’s seen her for a long time. 

“Tell me what’s wrong,” she says, and there’s a note of pleading in her tone. “This isn’t like you, Master. You were going to let me kill you.”

He just looks at her for a long second. He’s been willing to let everything end ever since his world was torn apart the first time he’d looked into the Doctor’s memories in the Matrix. Death would at least be peaceful, and how can he ever find peace knowing that his entire life is a lie?

“You,” he says, flatly. He doesn’t elaborate, and the Doctor gives him a miserable look and comes to sit on the end of the bed. 

“Please, Koschei. Tell me. Maybe I can fix this.”

Oh, and there it is. The Master’s face twists into a sneer, revulsion and bitterness and _pain_ etched into his features all of a sudden. “Yes, you’ll try and fix this,” he spits. “Because you’re so much more than I am. I’m nothing but a toy to you. Some inconsequential blip in your life that you can pick apart and _fix_ if you ever need something to do on a weekend.” He sits up in bed, and he’s shaking with anger. Staring into the Doctor’s face, at the wounded shock in her eyes. Why does it still hurt to see her look at him like that?

“Master, you’re not inconsequential, you-“

“I am,” he snaps instantly. “I am. You said it yourself. You’re the Timeless Child, Doctor, you made me, you made all of us. Always so special, so different.” He’s on his feet now, pacing the room, and the Doctor is still sitting and looking at him like he’s tearing her hearts out. He can’t stop himself. “I’m nothing compared to you, I never have been, and you _know_ it. I might as well just die, Doctor, because what else is there left for me when you—“

His back hits the wall so hard it knocks the air out of him, and the Doctor is in his face, eyes wild and feral. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare say one more word, Koschei.”

The Master just stares at her. Everything hurts, and his mind is screaming, screaming at him to push her away, get out of here, fling himself into the damned vacuum of space if it means he doesn’t have to be pinned against this wall. He goes limp under her grip instead, still staring. Begging her with his eyes to give him purpose again, because he’s so immeasurably tired of this. 

“You’re not inconsequential,” she starts. The Master bites back a disagreement, lets her continue. “I don’t remember any life before meeting you. However many regenerations there were, I don’t _care_ \- I just remember you. You made my childhood happy. You’re brilliant. Always have been. Smartest kid I knew, and you still let me copy your homework. All my good memories of Gallifrey, you’re right there with me. You know, even now, I always look forward to seeing you. Even when you try to kill me, or my friends.”

The Doctor steps away from him a little. The Master stays right where he is, thinks he might fall if he moves away from this wall. He can’t summon up a single thing to say, so he closes his eyes, tips his head back against the cold surface behind him. He hears the Doctor sigh. 

“I mean it, Master. You shine brighter than anyone I’ve ever known. You’re _beautiful_. Stunning. Absolutely fantastic. I don’t- I shouldn’t have said what I said in the Matrix room. You...you’ve always been a match for me, no matter what my biology says. I don’t know what I’d be without you.” 

He forces his eyes open, finding the Doctor’s face. She looks so completely sincere that it burns him all over again, sends heat through every nerve in his body. The Master feels his eyes prickle with tears, and he turns his head away. It doesn’t help. 

“I just-“ He presses his hands to his face, sinks to his knees. It’s pathetic, he knows that, but it’s all he can do in the moment. “ _Please_...don’t leave me again.” The Master hates how broken he sounds, even if it’s true, even if his psyche is shattered into a a million pieces and his hearts have been aching for almost a century now. 

“Never, Koschei. If that’s what you want.” The Doctor stands over him, and he looks up at her, and wonders if this is how it feels to worship. 

She reaches a hand down to help him up to his feet. The Master takes it, her palm warm against his own. He’s reminded of running through the streets on Gallifrey, hand-in-hand, laughing and ducking into alleyways to catch their breath and hide. 

Somehow, it doesn’t come as a surprise when she kisses him. The Master falls into it, lets himself be pushed back against the wall, lets the Doctor overtake all of his senses until he doesn’t have to think about a thing. He’s missed her more than anything; beyond the resentment, beyond the rage and the pain and the desperate inferiority- he’s missed how she feels in his arms. 

“Please,” she murmurs against his lips, and whatever she asks for, the Master is already willing to give it. “Let me show you what you mean to me.”

He nods, and she kisses him again, and her mind presses against his. The Master lets her in, finding himself hit immediately with a rush of fierce, protective affection, a thrill of dangerous excitement. The feeling of a bond forged that had been beaten and stretched and twisted but that had yet to ever break completely. 

He kisses the Doctor back, hands coming up to grip her shoulders so he doesn’t sink straight back to the floor under the weight of her affection. Her hands, meanwhile, are pushing his jacket off, stroking down his sides, touching him everywhere she can reach. 

What hits him next are memories. The two of them, laughing together as children. Long days spent poring over classwork as teenagers, sneaking off to run through the red grass outside, collapsing in a heap when they were too out of breath to run any further. 

Then, a shift- young Theta Sigma blushing furiously after his first kiss, young Koschei just laughing and kissing him again. Sneaking into each other’s rooms, spending nights in carefully-muffled tangles of bare limbs and exposed minds. Skipping classes, getting drunk in the cloisters and then running, always running, back outside, losing themselves in each other’s touches in the long grass. Beneath it all, an undercurrent of wild affection so strong that it left no room for doubt. 

The Master has to break their kiss to press his face against the Doctor’s shoulder, a noise escaping him that’s somewhere between a whimper and a moan. He broke himself down to nothing with his own imagination of what the Doctor would think of him when she found out who she really was, and this feels like being reborn, reshaped in blazing heat. 

“Do you see now?” The Doctor’s words come out barely louder than a whisper. It’s all he can do to nod, and cling to her, press himself against her body even as she presses him against the wall. “I still need you just like I used to. Always have done.” 

The Master tears at her clothes with a frantic desperation, needing them gone _now_. He needs the physicality; if she speaks any more, he thinks he might cry, or perhaps just spontaneously combust. 

The Doctor helps him, shrugging off her coat, fumbling with her trousers and then with his, then pressing their bodies together. The Master sinks into her with a shaky rush of breath, his fingers digging harder into her shoulders. 

For a moment, there’s no noise except their breaths, the sounds of both of them moving against each other. Then she pushes into his head again, the connection between them blazing brighter, stronger. She shares her feelings with him- her pleasure, her gratitude that he’s even here, several millennia’s worth of built-up affection and frustration and excitement. 

It’s all the Master can do to cling to her and share his feelings back. Past the resentment, there’s awe at what she is, at how lucky he is to have her in his life. That same flood of fondness that’s always been at the bottom of his hearts, just pushed down for so long in favour of the conflict that had kept them apart. 

“ _You really are brilliant_ ,” the Doctor says in his head, and the Master comes undone in her arms with a choked sob and her name on his lips. He feels her follow a moment later, feels her shake under the tight grasp he still has on her shoulders. 

There’s another few seconds of quiet before the Doctor is pulling them both back towards the bed, lying down and pulling the Master into her arms. He lets her do it, would let her do anything she wanted to him right now. He feels more whole than he has in so many years. 

“...Thank you, Theta,” he murmurs. They have a lot to talk about, the Master thinks. So much left to be sorted out, picked apart and fixed as best they can. But right now, all he wants to do is lie here and listen to the Doctor’s hearts beating. A rhythm that had tortured him for so much of his life, and yet now it’s the only thing he wants to listen to. 

“My pleasure,” the Doctor mumbles back, and she already sounds half asleep. It’s been a long day. The Master curls in against her, and for the first time since he’d uncovered those secrets buried deep within the Matrix, he lets himself hope that he can be happy again. 

**Author's Note:**

> this fic started as an angsty ‘what if they travelled together and then they fight about the Master’s new lack of self-worth’ and then it turned soft and I am fine with this


End file.
